


Tuamatangi

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Māori Character, Escort to the Afterlife, Gen, Lost Love, Out of Body Experiences, Unfinished Business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 22:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17476169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: Maybe in one world, she would have had a community around her today. People she shared blood with, and traditions. But the Society doesn't likefamily. It doesn't likeclose-knit community. So she's alone.Well. Almost alone.





	Tuamatangi

**Author's Note:**

> Google Translate is utterly useless at Māori words, as far as I can tell. For this fic I've used the Māori Dictionary, and the translations it provided are in the notes at the end of the fic.

Roimata woke from her snooze with a start. A chill had settled deep into her skin while the sun set, a shock from the warm sunlight that had felt like it was on her skin just moments ago. The garden was cast in shadow now; she could see pink streaks pushing outwards from the sky behind her house, fighting against the dark.

Pohau meowed. He had been in her lap when she drifted to sleep, but now he was pacing back and forth in front of the wicker chair and yelling.

“Alright, alright,” she muttered. “You’ll not starve if your food is a couple of hours late, you silly cat.” As she stood, her bones creaked like ancient wood, stiff from sitting still for hours – but also age. The silver takeover of her once-dark hair confirmed it; she was getting old.

She could hear the wind chimes blowing at the front of the house as she stepped through the open patio door. When the wind blew in the right direction, she could hear the waves on the beach as well. Instead, today, she heard an unfamiliar sound: The sound of floorboards under the weight of an intruder. Expecting a stoat or some other wandering creature, she approached the back room slowly, with as quiet footsteps as she could manage. When the room came into view, she struggled to comprehend just what kind of creature she was seeing for a moment – until she saw that it was a person.

“Excuse me,” she said irritably. “How did you get in here?” The front door was locked, and none of the windows opened from the outside. The only possible way for them to have entered was to climb over the garden fence and enter through the patio door.

The intruder didn’t answer; just continued to stand with their back to her, long braids knotted up against their skull and apparently looking at the collection of paintings and canvasses in varying states of completion that were stacked up against the wall. Pohau walked past Roimata and started circling the stranger’s feet and meowing at them. She frowned at him, trying to remind him that he should not be looking for pets from burglars.

The stranger turned. Roimata saw her glasses, and then her green eyes, and the face surrounding them that was much too young and relaxed and alive. “Hello, Roimata,” Claudia said. She said it so casually, as if she’d run into Roimata at the market. As if she’d never been gone.

How many times had she wished that she would unlock the door of the Cornwall house and find Claudia in the kitchen, burning pasta because she had suddenly been enlightened with an idea and needed to sketch it?

How many times had she wished to see an undiscovered painting appear in a gallery with a subject she couldn’t have painted more than a month ago?

How many times had she wished for a letter through her door from some far-off place where artists were gathered in harmonious solitude?

And yet never, not once, had she imagined that her first words to Claudia would be, “This isn’t fair.”

Claudia laughed. A laugh like the joyous peeling of bells, with the shadow of a cruel edge. She laughed like she was getting away with something. Like she knew something you didn’t. It hadn’t changed in ten years – but then she hadn’t aged in ten years, either. “No. It's not. It scarcely ever is.”

Her rage and her elation clashed horribly. It was ugly splatters of paint on canvas, done carelessly and in extremes. The colours overlapped and blended into a horrible churning sensation in her stomach. “You can _not_ do this,” she said. “You don’t get to be here. Not you.”

Claudia tilted her head to the side and wore a smile of light bemusement. “And who should be here in my place?” she asked.

Childishly, stupidly, Roimata’s instincts responded _my mother_. That imaginary soul who’d given her a name and then disappeared. Who’d never wanted to give her up, not really, she was sure, and if only the world was different would be all too happy to wait by her side before the journey to Te Pō. But not Claudia. Not the woman who’d stolen her heart and disappeared with it, who’d treated it like she treated art – beautiful, and free, and ripe for the taking. Who she’d idolised and adored for so long, through all of it, even despite her more difficult quirks. Who she still loved, somewhere deep down, in a sickening throb of her stolen heart.

For the first time since coming inside, her thoughts went to the garden. The body in the chair, slumped and cold. Alone.

She wasn’t supposed to be alone.

As Claudia looked at her expectantly for an answer, she thought of every person she had ever pushed away. Everyone she’d left behind when she moved to this little cottage on the shore of Aotearoa, who she’d made no effort to contact. All the neighbours she’d ignored, who had long-since stopped knocking on her door with friendliness in their hearts. The family she’d been denied by a society that thought peace was achieved through loneliness.

Pohau mewed and trotted back out of the room, towards the garden. She watched him go. The only loved one she had left was a cat. Did a cat count?

“Why did you have to be so impossible?”

Claudia smiled.

Impossible to love. Impossible to hate. Impossible to understand. Impossible to hold onto and impossible to let go.

She held out her hand. Tough hands; artist’s hands. “Take the plunge with me, my love,” she said. “Our time is done.”

Roimata looked at her. Inviting eyes, mischievous smile. The anxiety of her life, of how she was going to be received and loved, had melted away in death. She was bolder, now – she could see it on her face and in her shoulders. She’d learned to jump, to fall, to feel the thrill and fear of diving into the unknowable vastness of wilderness and tranquillity.

“I waited for you,” she said, “now you wait for me.”

Her smile fell. “Mata—”

She turned away. She wasn’t sure she was ready to return to the garden, to see herself there, lifeless. But she had to be. And it was better than facing her lover now, even after all that time wishing to see her face again. “I have to stay with my body, Claudia. I can’t leave until it’s found and dealt with.”

“...I see.”

Meaning she didn’t.

“Roimata… you will be here a long time.”

She remembered the six years of hoping that Claudia’s body would not be found. How selfish she had been, waiting until she washed up as chunks of rotting flesh and broken bone to say the words. To say goodbye. “I know.”

She was silent. The weight of her feet on the floorboards lifted, and although she didn’t want to, Roimata turned her head and saw the empty room. Her traitorous heart felt the stabbing pain of losing her again. Claudia would meet her in Hawaiki when it was time. This was not the end. This was _not_ goodbye.

Drawing in a shaky breath, she strode back out to the garden, where Pohau was batting at a butterfly as he stood vigil for her body. She couldn’t look at her own face, so she sat down in the grass and let the tears fall. Pohau gave up on his butterfly and headbutted her hand, and she stroked him. All that was left to do was wait for the grass to grow up around her.

**Author's Note:**

> Tuamatangi - dying gasp, last breath before death, death rattle.  
> Pohau - a type of wooden fish hook with a bone barb used for catching barracouta.  
> Te Pō - world of the dead.  
> Hawaiki - ancient homeland, the places from which Māori migrated to Aotearoa. It is believed that the _wairua_ returns to these places after death.  
> Wairua - spirit, soul; spirit of a person which exists beyond death.  
> Roimata - teardrop.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not Māori. I do not know everything about Māori tradition and while I've done by best to research this corner of their culture and tried to be respectful, it's possible I got things wrong. If you're Māori and have the time, energy, and desire to correct any mistakes I made, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.


End file.
